Osterholm Quotes

"Some of these products, particularly some vaccines, may take 500 million to a billion dollars. And they could lose many more along the way. And so with that, it could take years [for a Zika vaccine to reach market]."

"If citizens merely clean up any little small body of water — one little bottle cap, a discarded dish is a beautiful incubating place for the Aedes mosquito that transmits Zika — you can do a lot [to combat Zika]."

"When cases like this occur, it's critical that there be rapid epidemiological investigations to determine the likely location where the mosquito exposure occurred. Only with that can you identify the breeding sites and eliminate them."

"We'd all like it to be the peak of the outbreak, that would be wonderful. At the same time, I see nothing that supports that."

"The bottom line message is: If you’re going to share body fluids with Zika, there’s a risk."

"I really believe the worst is yet to come with Zika throughout the Americas. It has not peaked."

"We're going to see this [Zika] likely peak in the next 12 to 18 months in terms of the number of new infections. And then as more people become infected, and recover, the transmission dynamics will drop."

"Why should we have to wait until the crisis is right upon us before we act? Africa is like a gas can waiting for the yellow fever match to hit it."

"The CDC doesn't have the resources to be in every community. It's not the national health department. That would be like asking the FBI to provide local police service."

"We probably will respond to Zika with some urgency. But just know that these other crises are going to take a back seat. The public will get what they pay for in public health."

"The take-home message is you have to consider any kind of intimate contact between an infected person with Zika and a non-infected person as a potential risk situation, regardless of gender."

"I give [the CDC] credit for making clear and unambiguous statements about the [Zika-related] neurologic complications."

"Now we can get on with the debate about how to stop it."

"If West Africa was a gas can waiting for the Ebola match to strike, megacities in equatorial Africa are the gas tankers waiting for an Ebola spark. We simply cannot let this opportunity to prepare for the next outbreak pass us by."

"We should have been primed for the fact that an outbreak of Zika was going to happen."

"That could outstrip capacity that would be likely in the Americas. The warning in the study abstract is right on the mark."

"Despite the industry pointing its finger at the wild birds, [the evidence is] just not there. It was not the source of widespread [avian flu] transmission to many operations throughout the Upper Midwest."

"They [WHO leaders] don't have the authority to do anything. They don't have the resources to do any of it. If we blame WHO for this [response to Zika], shame on us because we're continuing to miss the lessons of these crises. The world's public health governance is a mess."

"If you have an infectious agent that causes Guillain-Barre syndrome, you have to be concerned that the vaccine could cause Guillain-Barre syndrome."

"There are so many holes in this ship. Even if we bail it out as much as we can with all our strength, we might still be sinking."